The cutting, trimming, general maintenance and styling of hair, specifically that found upon the head, has been a common practice reaching back to prehistoric times. A myriad designs have evolved for this purpose, most of which embody single or double-sided, straight-edged cutting surfaces. Such cutters include shears, razor blades, so-called safety razors, scissors and knives and other devices.
In conventional razor cutters for hair styling the uniform straight contact edge of the cutting surface causes a pulling and tugging of the hair as the cutting surface on the contact edge of the blade enters the hair strands prior to actual severance of the strand. The resulting cut is generally in a straight line which follows the contact surface shape and results in a hair shear plane substantially in a straight line.
Only with great difficulty and the skill of the user can a non-straight shear plane be created which must be carefully feathered or blended into the previous cut using a straight-edged razor cutter. This increases the skill level requirement of the operator and the number of bad haircuts that occur while the operator obtains that skill.
Similarly, the thinning or reduction of the bulk of the hair-mass on the head during hairstyling with a straight-edged razor is also quite difficult and more likely to cause injuries when working around the ears. Prior art is replete with numerous examples of single-edged, double-edged, opposed blades and other mechanisms, the majority of which provide blade cutting of hair for the purpose of the shaving of the face.